


you look at me as though||you couldn't bear to lose me

by only_partly



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Body Worship, Episode: s02e13 Dead Reckoning, Kneeling, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20344579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_partly/pseuds/only_partly
Summary: There's a lot of things they don't need words for. In the aftermath of the rooftop, they might need just a few.





	you look at me as though||you couldn't bear to lose me

**Author's Note:**

> here we are again, sliding in with fic years late to episode recaps. title is from Unexpected Song, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, because it's Hurtful.

_I don't know what is going on_  
_Can't work it out at all_  
_Whatever made you choose me_  
_I just can't believe my eyes_  
_You look at me as though_  
_You couldn't bear to lose me_

* * *

“Don’t mention it.” Harold doesn’t look up from where he’s hunched in his customary position over his computer, as though his saving John’s life was but one more line in an intricate piece of coding that he does as easily as breathing.

Okay, then. If Harold doesn’t want him to mention it, he won’t. He shrugs off his suit jacket and steps towards Harold. 

Harold looks up as he looms near, the only thing on his face faint impatience. “Mister Reese, I -” He cuts off as John sinks to his knees in front of him, both hands spread wide over wool-clad thighs. 

“I’m not saying anything, Finch,” John points out.

“Mister Reese.” Harold falters, starts again. “John. I trust you know this is not necessary.”

“If I want it, though?” John asks the rich rug underneath his knees.

“You may, of course, have anything in my power to give you.” Harold says at once, as though he’s saying something of no particular consequence.

The sheer vastness of that permission takes John’s breath away entirely for a moment, and then his hands are fumbling at Harold’s fly, cursing the fact that his suit pants button up like some sort of dandy from the 1800’s instead of using a zipper like every other man in New York. 

Harold’s hands move to lay gently on top of his own, stilling them. “I should warn you that the reaction you’re looking for - simply might not be there. And I don’t wish to leave you with any doubts about my attachment to you, John. It’s a matter of the flesh being weak, and so forth.”

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what the skin underneath his hands looks like, or the shape and size of it in his hand, he only wants to lose himself in touching it, to work himself so close to Harold’s body that everything of who he is becomes subsumed and the voice in his head that is always there to remind him he’s a monster, a killer, is drowned by the fact that Finch has given him a purpose. 

“Do you know,” he says slowly, looking down at Harold’s unbuttoned fly and the hint of silk beneath it, “when we were helping that number. Riley.”

“Cavenaugh.” Harold doesn’t comment on the non-sequitur. “And Annie. I remember.”

“He said she was the best thing that ever happened to him. That she made him think he could be more than just a killer.” He looks up. Harold is looking back at him, and he can tell he’s been understood.

“You’ve always been more than a killer, John.” Harold says. His hands tighten on top of John’s. “Always. No matter what they tried to turn you into. You never lost that spark of goodness. You kept it alive, somehow, despite everything. And that was  _ you _ who did that. Not me. All I’ve done is put a fine suit on the finest of souls.”

“Harold.” John says, helplessly, and thank goodness Harold seems to understand, because John has nothing left in him to say. He bends his head instead, resting it on Harold’s hands, and one of them slides free and covers the top of his head like a benediction.

“My John,” Harold says quietly.

John kisses Harold’s other hand, feeling like part of him is breaking from the tenderness in Harold’s voice, and reaches once again for the glimpse of silk. Harold lets him, keeping one hand anchored in John’s hair.

He thrills to the touch, even as his hands tremble on Harold’s sheath. It’s bespoke, of course; the neat stitches suggesting it’s been handmade as well. The thigh-strap holding Harold’s cock neatly in place feels far too delicate for his callused hands as he undoes the button on the thigh and then the four along the shaft. Underneath, the soft flesh is warm but not full. John glances upward for permission before he leans forward, pressing a kiss to the tip of it. Harold’s hand tightens in his hair, but he gives no other indication that he’s even noticed the touch. 

Having a taste, though, is tantamount to the most addicting drug man has ever conceived. John dives in again and again like a starving man, patiently touching and stroking and sucking and heedless of the mess he’s making of his face and his own suit, only taking care that Harold’s clothes remain as impeccable as ever. He’s rewarded an hour or ten later by Harold’s choked off gasp and an abortive twitch of his hips and John swallows twice, three times, and pulls off just enough to lay his head on Harold’s thigh, every cell of his body thrumming with satisfaction, despite his own cock straining at the cap-and-button that holds it fastened to his thigh.

Harold’s fingers in his hair loosen and stroke gently through his hair before Harold speaks. “Thank you, John.”

John hums in response, feeling like anything he might say would come out only as a sonnet or hymn and the safer choice by far is to simply remain kneeling and take whatever Harold chooses to give him. 

“Go ahead and clean me up, now.” Harold says, smoothing a hand down the side of John’s neck. “And then we’ll see about getting you home.”

This makes a pang of disquiet shoot through the lovely fog John is drifting in, because he doesn’t want to go home to his perfectly appointed condo and lie in his lonely bed counting guns until he falls asleep, but Harold must sense his unease, because he adds, “With Bear and I, of course.”

John darts a glance upwards, grateful, before he carefully buttons Finch back into his sheath and his pants, bringing both hands down Harold’s thighs and shins as though he can smooth out any potential wrinkles. And then, because he’s there, he kisses the inside of one wool-covered knee before moving down a little further and pressing his mouth to the cool leather of Finch’s Italian-made shoes. His face feels hot, even through the fog, and if Harold reacts in disgust - but Harold, perfect, wonderful Harold, has a hand on his head, keeping him from raising it. 

“The other one as well.”

He doesn’t think he’s imagining the tremble in Harold’s voice, but he’s not telling him to stop, and John will take his absolution in any form Harold will offer it to him, and he flattens himself gratefully to his stomach in order to lavish the same kind of care and attention to Harold’s shoes as he had to his cock. What does it matter what part of Harold acknowledges his debt to? The debt he owes for the purpose he’s been given and the care that Harold’s taken of a man whose worth was estimated at nothing more than the lives he could take.

Harold gave him lives to save instead, a slow portfolio of names on the side of the light, in the service of someone who mourned each life lost instead of laughing at his fears and hesitations and demanding a killer, a monster.

Then there are hands on his shoulders, pulling him up, and Harold’s mouth is on his, warm and a little rough, like he’s been lost in his work too long to remember to eat or drink anything. It’s just a press of lips, almost chaste in length, but Harold’s hands are on him still, running over every inch of his chest and back and stroking at the back of his neck, lightly enough to make him shiver. It’s perfect.

“Come on.” Harold says softly, “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> oh also! the idea of lingerie for dicks has been borrowed with permission from astolat's absolutely incredible [concept](https://archiveofourown.org/works/782289) and from [this post](https://astolat.tumblr.com/post/44757904191/devildoll-princess-fluffybutt)


End file.
